Please join us to launch and to discuss issues raised in Sam Hope’s new book on using a person-centred approach with trans clients for counsellors and therapists.

Trans clients are frequently doubted and misunderstood by professional counsellors. Sam’s book will be essential reading for professionals who want to support trans people’s mental health and wellbeing, helping to rebalance the relationship between the therapist and the client.

Sam Hope is a non-binary trans therapist with many years’ of working with the LGBT community and is a well-known trans community worker/campaigner and blogger.

This event will be of interest to any counselling or mental health professional who wants to understand more about working with trans and gender diverse clients as well, of course, to trans people generally and particularly trans people who work with other trans people.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2 students) which includes refreshments and is redeemable against any purchase.

Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Laura Knight (1877–1970) was an English Realist painter who documented life and culture in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. She was born in Long Eaton and was taught, and then taught at Nottingham School of Art.

Educated at a time when studying life-drawing was the preserve of male artists, Knight railed against social restrictions of the day and established her own life studio. She was a consummate documentarist and her studies of the ballet as well as her government-commissioned depictions of women’s wartime labour during the First World War are some of the this artist’s most enduring works. She has been exhibited in Nottingham several times.

The first female artist to be elected a full Royal Academician, and with a career that spanned seven decades, Knight was one of the most important artists of her day. Today her work features in public collections across the UK and around the world, including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museums, London.

Alice Strickland is currently Curator in the London and South East region of the National Trust. Her book on Laura Knight is one of a series of inexpensive books on women artists published by a new publisher, Eiderdown Books.

Below are typical pictures by Laura Knight – of Romany women, of ballet dancers, and the seaside

Tickets: £4.00 (students £2.00) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH BROADWAY
Dirs: Clive Myer & Lynda Myer-Bennett
Country: UK
Year: 2013
Duration: 104m
Starring: Lucy Black, Paul Currier
Shot nonstop on location over one weekend, The Orchard is an improvised take on the most seen play in the world – Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Working with six actors from Shakespeare at The Tobacco Factory the film questions the role(s) and meaning of acting as it interpolates text and theatre into film. Underlying the Chekhov structure is Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. The script was two pages long. Interestingly, the film won Best Screenplay at the Amsterdam Film Festival!

• Winner: Best Feature Film, Amsterdam Film Festival Van Gogh Screenplay Competition

• Winner: Best Foreign Film, Yosemite International Film Festival, USA

• Official selection: Trenton Film Festival, USA

• Official Selection: Cambridge UK Film Festival

• Official Selection: UnderCannes Film Festival, France

• Official Selection: Mongolian Film Festival

• Award Winning Film of the Indie Gathering Film Festival, Ohio

• Official selection: The Cutting Edge Film Festival

Graham Caveney will be in discussion with Clive and Lynda about the film too.

Clive recently spoke at the bookshop as part of our Radical Film night

One of an occasional series of Five Leaves/Broadway joint events

Tickets: normal Broadway cinema prices apply. Tickets only from Broadway cinema

Note – this event is at Broadway, not the bookshop!

NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE

To celebrate the release of his new book Cursed Britain, historian Thomas Waters presents the fascinating but largely unknown history of witchcraft and magic in modern times.

This evocative, interactive talk will explore the many styles and types of magic that have thrived in Britain since the early 1800s. From cunning-men and wise-women to Scottish warlocks, Welsh cursing wells, Roma fortune-tellers, shapeshifting witches and numerous other spiritual healers, it’s a diverse and amazing topic.

Tom has spent the best part of the last decade busily researching the modern history of witchcraft and magic. He’s enthralled by everything mystical, but is particularly interested in the experiences of people who believe they’re cursed, as well as the individuals who are deemed responsible, and the spiritual healers who provide aid in times of great crisis.

The secretive but extraordinary story of witchcraft in modern times stretches from the rural world of Georgian Britain, through the territories of the British Empire, to the multicultural present day. Tom will be telling some spellbinding stories and, for magical practitioners amongst you, giving tips about how you could use historic witchcraft in your own spells. Believer, sceptic or not sure: all are welcome and discussion is encouraged.

Tickets: £4 redeemable against book purchase

NOTE CHANGE TO A BIGGER VENUE

This event will be fully booked so it is essential to let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Keith Kahn-Harris starts his book Strange Hate: antisemitism, racism and the limits of diversity by describing an idyllic scene in his local park, with Haredi (strictly Orthodox Jews) on the pedalos, the Cypriot ice-cream trader, Bangladeshi women on the grass having a picnic, the multi-ethnic group of skateboarders, the Nigerian family strolling home from church… an idyllic diverse scene but fragile, especially at a time when climate change might make millions more people need refuge.

But he is a Jew, whose community is sometimes divided into “good Jews” and “bad Jews”, which sometimes feel they are the subject of a strange hatred in the politics of diversity. He offers an analysis of how we got to this position and a way of rowing back.

Keith Kahn-Harris is a writer and sociologist whose books include Denial: the unspeakable truth, Uncivil War: the Israel conflict in the Jewish community, Judaism: all that matters and (with Ben Gidley) Turbulent Times: the British Jewish Community Today. He has also written several books on heavy metal music.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments

In association with Repeater Books

This event is certain to sell out so booking is essential via events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Shreya Sen Handley and Five Leaves Bookshop have pleasure in inviting you to launch Shreya’s first book of short stories, published in India by HarperCollins (but we will have copies!)

Ruskin Bond, the grand old man of Indian literature said

The author is adept at evoking an atmosphere of fear in apparently mundane situations. After reading some of these dark tales I found myself looking under my bed. Masterful!

Join us to discuss James Baldwin’s first novel –

‘I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.’Drawing on James Baldwin’s own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, he tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if ‘the Holy Ghost were riding on the air’. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different.

Free, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves book group is open to all,  come to as many or as few meetings as you are interested in. Your only commitment is to read the book and want to discuss it!

We don’t mind where you get the book but we offer 15% off our book group books generally, in the lead up to each event.

‘Where are you from?’ was the question hounding Hazel Carby in postwar. London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Carby’s place in her home and her country of birth was always in doubt.  Carby untangles the threads connecting members of her family to each other in a web woven by the British Empire. In England, she was thrilled by the cosmopolitan fantasies of empire, by cities built with slave-trade profits, and by street peddlers selling fashionable Jamaican delicacies. In Jamaica, we follow the lives of the `white Carbys’ and the `black Carbys’, as Mary Ivey, a free woman of colour, whose children are fathered by Lilly Carby, a British soldier who arrived in Jamaica in 1789 to be absorbed into the plantation aristocracy.

Moving between the Jamaican plantations, Devon, the port cities of Bristol, Cardiff, and Kingston, and the working-class estates of South London, Carby’s family story is a personal history and a summation of the violent entanglement of two islands.

Hazel V. Carby is a co-author of The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain and author of Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America, Race Men, and Reconstructing Womanhood. For three decades she taught at Yale University as the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and Professor of American Studies.

Chaired by Viji Kuppan

In association with Verso Books

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students). We expect this event to sell out so booking essential through events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Jen Campbell’s first Bloodaxe collection The Girl Aquarium explores the realm of rotten fairy tales, the possession of body and the definition of beauty. Weaving between whispered science and circus, she turns a cracked mirror on society and asks who gets to control the twisted tales hiding in the wings.

‘Poetry of innocence and wonder. Poetry of darkness and deformation. The poems about girlhood experiences are daringly original.’ – DALJIT NAGRA

Jen is the author of the Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops series,  the short story collection The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night and her children’s books include Franklin’s Flying Bookshop.

Jen worked as a bookseller for ten years and now runs a Youtube channel where  she talks about books and the history of fairy tales. She also has a podcast, runs online writing workshops, offers editorial services and gives talks at schools, universities and book festivals. She runs a book club for TOAST, talks about books monthly on BBC Radio 5 Live, and is Vlogger in Residence for the Poetry Book Society.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students). Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Andrew Graves and Five Publications invite you to the launch of Welcome to the Cheap Seats: silver screen portrayals of the British working class

Andrew Graves explores the British New Wave kitchen sink dramas of the 50s and 60s before moving on to more culturally diverse and female-orientated films in this gritty sub-genre, which often clashed with controversy, censorship and the establishment.

The book launch will include clips from films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Kes, Quadrophenia, A Taste of Honey and This is England.

Andrew has run courses on film at Broadway and has published three collections of poems in his other (but related) life as a touring performance poet. He lives in Nottingham, which is significantly represented in this book and presentation.

Free, refreshments included but booking is essential on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Andrew will also be presenting more formally at our Radical Bookfair on November 2nd, Nottinghamshire Libraries Readers Day, States of Independence in Leicester and elsewhere.

We welcome you to join us for a fantastic poetry reading with Helen Tookey and three Nottingham Trent University Creative writing PhD students, Hannah Cooper-Smithson, Lauren Terry and Panya Banjoko  who will be reading  alongside her.

Helen Tookey’s first full-length poetry collection, Missel-Child (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize in 2015. Her second, City of Departures (Carcanet, 2019) has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2019. She lives in Liverpool.

This event is free, let us know you are coming by emailing events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Sean Richardson (editor), the  contributors and Five Leaves Bookshop invite you to the booklaunch of our new title Unorthodox: LGBT+ Identity and Faith

In modern Britain, what does it mean to be queer and religious? Unorthodox tells the stories of LGBT+ people of faith throughout the country. Bringing together artists, activists, religious leaders, community workers and writers, this collection explores how LGBT+ Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs navigate their faith, why they stay and what it means to believe no matter the cost. These urgent, deeply personal reflections move beyond the idea that LGBT+ people must choose between being included or excluded, between believing and doubting, and between their faith and their sexuality. Born out of a yearning to resist outdated binaries, Unorthodox is a surprising journey that will resonate with readers of all stripes, be they believers or not. Covering everything from hip-hop to habits, priesthood to pilgrimages, festivals to family, Unorthodox ignites a new conversation about religion, faith, sexuality and identity in Britain. It is vital consideration of devotion that bridges denomination, orientation, salvation, temptation and divination.

Sean Richardson will be joined by other contributors to the book in a panel conversation about the themes raised in the book.

Free, refreshments provided. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

This event will also run – with a different panel – at Gays the Word in London on Sunday 6th October, 6.30 for 7.00pm. Again, please let us know you are coming to that. You can come to both of course!

Unorthodox is published by Five Leaves Publications

Join us to celebrate National Poetry Day with…

Nafeesa Hamid is a British Pakistani poet and playwright based in Birmingham. Her work covers taboo themes such as sex, domestic violence and mental health, using personal experience as a basis for her writing. She has read at Five Leaves before, one of our most memorable readings.

In her collection, Besharam,  she treads the shifting line between woman and daughter, between Pakistan and the West, between conservative Islam and liberal, Nafeesa has almost had to find a new language to try to communicate the difficulties of her situation.

Rupinder Kaur is a Birmingham born Panjabi poet and biomedical science student with a love for South Asian arts. She sees writing and reading poetry as a way to liberate the soul.

For Rupinder, writing, along with any other art form, should be azaad – free, free to express what the artist wants or needs to say, without any censorship.  Rupinder is known for speaking her mind and this is reflected in her poems. In Rooh, her debut poetry collection, she takes us on a poetic journey that transcends borders and arbitrary boundaries.

Both poets are published by Verve

£5.00 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

At Friends Meeting House (Quakers)

Book the date meantime. Ticketing… to follow shortly, but Jess will be speaking about her interviews with community activists from Grenfell, from the Irish abortion rights campaign and others.

This event will be at Gays the Word in London.  See  the 2nd October for the same event here at Five Leaves.

Sean Richardson (editor), the contributors and Five Leaves Bookshop invite you to the booklaunch of our new title Unorthodox: LGBT+ Identity and Faith

In modern Britain, what does it mean to be queer and religious? Unorthodox tells the stories of LGBT+ people of faith throughout the country. Bringing together artists, activists, religious leaders, community workers and writers, this collection explores how LGBT+ Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs navigate their faith, why they stay and what it means to believe no matter the cost. These urgent, deeply personal reflections move beyond the idea that LGBT+ people must choose between being included or excluded, between believing and doubting, and between their faith and their sexuality. Born out of a yearning to resist outdated binaries, Unorthodox is a surprising journey that will resonate with readers of all stripes, be they believers or not. Covering everything from hip-hop to habits, priesthood to pilgrimages, festivals to family, Unorthodox ignites a new conversation about religion, faith, sexuality and identity in Britain. It is vital consideration of devotion that bridges denomination, orientation, salvation, temptation and divination.

Sean Richardson will be joined by other contributors to the book in a panel conversation about the themes raised in the book.

Free, refreshments provided. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk. The event will start at 6.30 with drinks, with the formal discussion at 7.00.

This event will also run – with a different panel – at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham on October 2nd at 7.00pm. You are welcome to attend either event, or both!

Unorthodox is published by Five Leaves Publications

‘I must find my own complicated junkie to have violent sex with. In 1994, nothing seemed like a better idea, save being able to write about it later.’

Michelle Tea is our exuberant, witty guide to the hard times and wild creativity of queer life in America. Along the way she reclaims SCUM Manifesto author Valerie Solanas as an absurdist, remembers the lives and deaths of the lesbian motorbike gang HAGS, and listens to activists at a trans protest camp. This kaleidoscope of love and adventure also makes room for a defence of pigeons and a tale of teenage goths hustling for tips at an ice creamery in a ‘grimy, busted city called Chelsea’. Unsparing but unwaveringly kind, Michelle Tea reveals herself and others in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

With her new memoir Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition that treats our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love. The book ranges widely over history and culture, literature and art, exploring a threshold experience that is intimately involved with trespass and contamination: the illicit importing of day into night. With Insomnia, Benjamin aims to light up the workings of our inner minds, delivering a startlingly fresh look at what it means to be wakeful in the dark.

Review here: www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/26/insomnia-by-marina-benjamin-review-sleeplessness

Introduced by Graham Caveney

Tickets: £4 (£2 students). Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

This is really just a claiming date…

An event in association with The Letters Page, University of Nottingham

Venue and ticketing details to follow